Voyage of the Devilfish

“Skipper,” Rapier said, one hand on his earpiece, “the son of a bitch just launched a nuke at us!” Pacino said nothing. The OMEGA had just responded as he’d hoped. This was the confrontation he’d been waiting for. He took a deep breath and issued a string of orders.

“Helm, all stop.” He watched as the speed indicator went from 34 knots to near zero, aware of the eyes on him.

“Offsa’deck, shift propulsion to the Emergency Propulsion Motor. And relay the word to maneuvering: group scram the reactor, secure all reactor main coolant pumps, engage emergency cooling, shut main steam valves one and two and secure steam to the engine room.” Rapier, standing down by the firecontrol console, looked at Pacino, sweat breaking out on his forehead. Pacino had, after all, just ordered the ship to be completely shut down, the only lights remaining supplied from the battery. Finally Stokes found his voice: “Sir, that torpedo’ll be running up our ass in about three minutes. We’ve gotta run.” Rapier joined in, looking at the chronometer.

“Sir, we can’t play possum here under the ice. With the reactor dead and no steam and without a hovering system we’ll need to go two knots on the Emergency Propulsion Motor just to maintain depth control. That kind of currentdraw will kill the battery in twenty minutes, maybe less. Under the ice we can’t recover from that. We could try to restart the reactor right now and we’d never make it.” There was no time to argue. Pacino looked Rapier in the eyes.

“XO, when we shut down, that torpedo will never hear us. It’ll go by like we’re invisible. Besides, if we run we’ll either hit a pressure ridge and sink from a ripped-open hull or get killed from the nuke — we can’t outrun that SOB, it goes sixty god damned knots.” Stokes’ hand shook as he picked up the P.A. Circuit Seven microphone to maneuvering in the engine room and passed the orders. As the reactor was shut down the ventilation fans whined to a halt. The room grew immediately stuffy and lights winked out in the overhead. The heart and lungs of the USS Devilfish had stopped. She drifted south in the current, a 100-kiloton nuclear warhead crashing toward her at 60 knots.

CHAPTER 17

SUNDAY, 19 DECEMBER, 0917 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

WESTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN

The SSN-X-27 canister was buoyant, nose-light, tail-heavy. On leaving tube four of the Vladivostok, the canister was already going forty clicks and angling upward. Two fins had popped out from the stem of the canister as it left the torpedo tube, both fins horizontal, both slightly angled upward at their trailing edges. The nose-light canister, aided by the tail fins, rose to the surface of the Atlantic, leaving the Vladivostok, by then imploding and sinking to the bottom, far behind. Launch depth had been fifty meters. It would take almost thirty seconds for the SSN-X-27 to broach the surface. Every second of those thirty was vital to the missile’s success as it ran through internal checks and arming sequences.

A failure on any of the dozens of logic circuits and interlocks would cause the weapon to inert itself and shut down. But each interlock checked out. Behind and astern of the missile, the twin detonations of Billfish’s Mark 49 torpedoes hit the Vladivostok amidships and forward, first blowing holes in the hulls, inner and outer, and filling a sphere thirty meters in diameter with hot expanding gases. The gas expansion was much too slow to affect the missile. The disintegrating hull of the firing ship was also of no concern to the SSN-X-27. Long since separated from the Vladivostok’s firecontrol system, the missile was completely independent. Autonomous. It swam to the surface, encapsulated, waterproof. When the broach sensors indicated that the nose had broken through the waves and was touching air, the nosecone of the capsule would blow off from the action of thirty-two explosive bolts. The rest of the capsule, suspended momentarily half-submerged, half-broached, would serve as a launch pad, and the rocket motor first stage would ignite, lifting the missile out of the cylindrical capsule, which would then sink.